What does it consist of?
What does it mean to defend in a middle block, it means that we give the rival the initiative when it comes to leaving the ball so that they can generate that superiority and that they can leave that first line more easily and it means placing our team between the zone of progression or start and the opponent's finishing zone.
With this system we are going to let the opponent start the play with ease, and we will direct their attack towards the area where we are interested. Since we will find ourselves compact and we will not let the rival receive in intermediate zones. Although playing this way also has some consequences, because we leave some space behind us, which we have to watch out for, since the rival can hurt us by attacking those spaces, because if the rival does not find an exit through the middle because we are closing the interior spaces well, what they will seek will be to open the ball out and move to find our back.
What should we do?
When the rival has possession of the ball, we have to see if that line of the ball is covered or released.
- If it is covered, we must maintain the area in which we are located
- But if a rival player has the ball and has an open passing line, which means that he has time and space to act, the defensive line and the block have to be outlined and gain a safe distance so that they cannot win our back.
Middle Block Exercise
Task to work on the withdrawal in the middle block in the defensive phase.
The task will begin with a 4v4 + wild card possession in a delimited central zone, to which only the wild card will have access.
If the team that is on the outside were able to connect with a wild card, they would attack the big goal. If, on the other hand, the team that is defending managed to intercept the pass or gain possession of the ball by stealing, they would still attack the big goal.
When either of the two teams goes on to defend the big goal, the only premise they will have in this role will be to fall back to the delimited area marked as the fallback area. In this way, we will get the footballers to internalize the limit height to which they can sink in case of acting in defensive tasks.
